My Clockwork Muse (7 page)

"I must finish it first," I said, a little
crossly. I didn't believe in curses, but all this fuss over an
unfinished story was starting to make me nervous.

"Still, even the best stories are not immune
to criticism. It must be hard to accept negative reviews. Your new
story here, for instance. Of such unsurpassed excellence—\s 12at
least as it begins. Were it to be maligned by some hack reviewer
somewhere...Why, that must be galling to you almost beyond
endurance."

I laughed. This had become too much. "Sir, I
have not even finished the tale and you praise it and condemn it by
turns! I must ask that we speak no further of my unfinished
work."

"Your agitation makes my point exactly, Mr.
Poe. It cannot be easy to have one's work the subject of such
constant public scrutiny. You must at times wonder how much better
it would be to labor in some anonymous enterprise. As it is, harsh
words are inevitable. These, for example..." He fished in his coat
pocket and produced a folded wad of paper upon which he had
scribbled a few words. He spent a moment smoothing the sheet. Then
he held it close to his eyes and began to read aloud. I let him go
on for a while until I felt my blood begin to boil. "
'...I
regret to find Mr. Poe's name in connexion with such a mass
of...'
"

I could take no more. "
'...ignorance and
effrontery,'
" I finished for him. "Yes, yes, I know the
slanderous blather word-for-word. And you're right, Inspector. It
is beyond endurance. I must ask you to stop at once."

"So it is as I thought—the words
do
sting. I imagine your opinion of the man who wrote them—"

"The villain Billy Burton!" I snapped.

"Ah, indeed!" Gessler exclaimed with a note
of triumph. "William E. Burton, to be exact. One might call him
your inveterate enemy, Mr. Poe, the late Billy Burton..."

"A scoundrel without equal," I began with
some enthusiasm, until the Inspector's words crystallized in my
mind. "What do you mean the
late
Billy Burton?" I asked with
sudden trepidation.

Gessler gazed at me evenly. "William E.
Burton was the man we found walled up in the boarding house
basement, Mr. Poe. The corpse dressed as a fool, as Fortunato. It
was your man Burton."

"What do you mean '
my
man Burton'? He
is as much yours as mine. Now that you say he is dead, I daresay he
is
more
yours than mine, since murder is your business."

I had made a mistake telling Gessler about
Pluto. I would not make the same mistake with Burton. He thought
Burton was dead. So what? If I were to be bothered with every dead
man I might have argued with in life, I should be kept busy
indeed.

Anyway, I knew Burton to be alive.

Didn't I?

I had Gessler tell me how he had identified
the dead man. I myself had known the scoundrel well in life and had
mistaken the corpse's moldering face for Burton's, so how was it
that Gessler could be so sure? Obviously, Briggs had planted the
idea, no doubt informing the inspector of my own erroneous
conclusion. But when the inspector told me that they had taken
careful measurements of the body and had even brought in Burton's
dentist to identify his fillings and crowns, I began to feel a
little queasy.

My impulse was to confess that I had seen the
man, quite alive, not twenty-four hours before. But I had begun to
doubt my own senses. Briggs, Gessler assured me kindly, was quite
concerned for my health. The man's constant needling and my own
lack of restful sleep had me wondering as well. If it hadn't been
Saturday, I would have rushed back into the city to revisit Burton
in his office, regardless of the row it would cause. As it was, my
meeting with the man might have occurred in a dream—or perhaps in a
somnambulistic trance. I wasn't going to risk declaring with any
certainty that Burton lived when Gessler claimed on scientific
grounds that he most certainly did not. If what I believed was
true, Gessler would find out soon enough on his own.

On the other hand, I had no doubt that
Gessler suspected me of the crime and it was only in my own best
interest to prove that Burton lived or, if he did not, to ascertain
who, other than me, might have killed him.

That meant I had to revisit the crime scene.
I had no faith that Gessler had pursued any lead once his
suspicions had alighted on me. Moreover, I now assumed that he had
suspected me all along, that his talk of Dupin had been a simple
ruse to get me to the scenes of his murders. There, he had no doubt
studied my reactions and weighed my every word, hoping I might
incriminate myself. I vowed on the spot to meet his guile with an
equal measure of my own. If he thought to trick me into exposing
myself by word or deed, the man was sadly mistaken. As he would
find to his dismay, my Dupin would meet his Gessler and the
game—for that is how it now felt—would not even be close at the
end.

The next train for the city left at 3:15,
giving me just enough time to make myself presentable. Thinking to
shave, I filled a basin. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I
did indeed present a frightful appearance. My hair was unwashed and
fell in greasy strands over my expansive forehead. My eyes were
ringed darkly and under-girded with heavy, swollen bags. The
darkness of the shadow thrown over my eyes by my too-thick brow was
exaggerated by the ghastly pallor of my flesh. I am not given to
characterizing my appearance as a rule, but when my eye first fell
upon my countenance in the mirror, I was shocked to see such a
haunted man looking back at me.

"You're not looking good, Eddy."

As I ran my razor under my chin, I saw that
Tap had perched on my shoulder. He leaned forward and gazed into
the mirror as if I had gotten it out solely for the pleasure of
admiring his face in it.

"Ouch!" I jerked back when the razor bit into
my neck. "Do you want me to cut my own throat?"

"If I wanted you to cut your own throat, I'd
leave you alone and let you do it."

"Now there's an idea," I said.

Ignoring the raven, I worked carefully around
Pluto's claw marks. Then I remembered the wound on my neck and
pulled down my collar. It was as Gessler had said: a single round
hole surrounded by a ring of rather angry swollen flesh. I daubed
it with a cloth and a bit of soap. Originally, I had thought the
wound to be a product of one of Pluto's claws, but now I had my
doubts. Unless he had only a single claw on one of his paws, I
didn't see how he could have caused such a singular wound without
at least a few attendant scratches or additional punctures of
various depths accompanying it. This one was solitary, deep and
more than a little sore. I had no idea what it could be.

Except...

I remembered seeing something similar on
Virginia's throat before she died. At first, I had taken it to be a
bug bite of some sort. Perhaps some large mosquito or overzealous
horsefly. Then, as I inspected it more closely, I saw that it had
an intentional, almost surgical, look to it and concluded that it
was probably the work of Dr. Coppelius, being some arcane attempt
at cure or comfort. In that context, it did not strike me odd as I
had grown accustomed to the doctor's mystifying and often secretive
methods. My trust in himR12 \f "Times New Roman" \s 12and in his
daughter Olimpia who usually assisted him—was implicit and
unquestioned. As Virginia's condition worsened and my fear of her
inevitable passing grew, I quickly forgot about the curious mark
and thought no more of it.

Until now.

I wracked my memory, hoping to see it again
in my mind's eye. But it was no good. Whether our wounds were
identical or mere coincidence, it was impossible now to tell. I set
the mirror aside and readied myself to leave.

"You're not going out like that, are you?"
Tap asked. He had flapped from my shoulder and alighted on the
table where Gessler had set his teacup.

I ran the damp cloth over my face and head.
It was the best I could do in the time I had to catch the train. At
least I was shaved. "I've got to get going," I said.

"Aren't you even going to change your
clothes? How long you been wearing that get-up?"

"No time, Tap." I looked at my watch. "Damn!"
I thrust it back into my pocket and rushed for the door.

"I don't know what you think you're going to
find there," Tap complained as I left. Outside on the porch, I
could still hear him. "I'll just wait here then..." He was saying,
along with other choice tidbits that were thankfully lost to me as
I rushed across the overgrown lawn toward the train station to
town.

~ * * * ~

The street in front of the boarding house was
deserted when I got there. I considered that a stroke of luck and
walked rapidly toward the building, hoping to slip inside before
anyone saw me. Why I should have considered that important, I did
not know. In fact, it was not until I was in the vestibule and
pushing the door closed silently behind me that I realized I had no
idea what I intended to do.

But whatever it was, I felt like a thief
doing it.

I turned and saw a man descending the stairs
towards me. I realized it might seem suspicious of me to just stand
at the door and wait for him to pass. So I made for the stairs
myself, ascending with a quick, familiar step as if I had some
usual business on the second floor. I gave the man a disinterested
nod as we passed and continued on until I heard the door slam shut
below me. Then I turned and quickly retraced my steps. At the base
of the stairs, I entered the corridor that I knew from my previous
visit led to the basement door.

A thrill passed through me. I was a writer, a
magazine editor and literary critic, not a cat-burglar. Even though
no one pursued me and I was doing nothing particularly wrong, the
idea of sneaking through the house where a heinous crime had been
committed filled me with a feeling of excitement. I had fooled the
man on the stairs into believing I was a tenant or a frequent
visitor. This little triumph made me feel oddly invulnerable and
had the effect of increasing my enthusiasm for the day's
enterprise. I now felt certain I could find some evidence in the
basement that would incriminate Fortunato's murderer. The more I
attempted to visualize the scene as I had witnessed it, the more I
became convinced that Gessler's men had probably destroyed more
evidence than they had uncovered, and that the key to solving the
mystery still lay untouched amid the ruins of their careless
investigation.

In short, I found I rather enjoyed playing a
real-life Dupin.

Still, however stealthy my movements and
clever my conduct, I could not summon the courage to place my hand
on the knob of the basement door. Reflecting my image back at me
with fish-eyed distortion, the very stillness of the object seemed
bloated with a promise of terror. As I drew back my fingers, I
consoled myself that it was not mere cowardice that stayed my hand,
but a sudden premonition. Perhaps not every clue was to be found
below. I decided to investigate upstairs first.

The smell of cooking filled my nostrils and I
followed it past the basement door to a kitchen that opened at the
end of the corridor. A long cloth-covered table surrounded by many
well-worn chairs dominated the center of the room. On the stove, a
covered pot simmered quietly. It occurred to me that such a
well-used place in close proximity to the corridor through which
Fortunato and his killer would have had to pass might have harbored
witnesses, late-night diners or, more likely, a cook or other
staff. Out of curiosity—or perhaps hunger—I made my way to the pot
and, lifting the lid, had a look inside. Some kind of savory meat
stew stared back at me and my mouth began to water. I looked around
for a spoon, thinking to take a little taste (what would it hurt?),
when I was startled by the sound of a crashing dish behind me. In
my fright, I dropped the lid and it crashed with equal clangor back
onto the open mouth of the pot. I turned and saw a fat woman
staring at me wide-eyed in terror. In her hands she held a stack of
clattering dishes. Another lay in broken shards around her
feet.

"Oh, pardon me, madam! I did not intend to
frighten you." I rushed to her, meaning to take the stack from her
hands, but she recoiled out of my reach until her back was pressed
tightly to the wall. Her fear puzzled me. It was more than shock at
finding a strange man tasting her stew. She was afraid of
me
. I stopped and began picking up the pieces of the
shattered plate. "I have just arrived on ... police business," I
told her, instantly warming to the lie, "and was attracted by the
scent—"

"Oh, you're with the police!" she cried and
her whole body sagged with relief. "Oh, my heavens! For a moment, I
thought you were—" She set her plates down on the table, and,
breathing hard, began fanning her face. I saw that sweat dripped
down her jowls. Once her breathing had returned to normal, she
looked up with a stern expression. "But, look here! I have already
told the police everything I know. Is it police business now to
browbeat honest people who have done nothing wrong?"

"I have no intention of browbeating anyone,
madam." I saw an opportunity here, and I decided to pursue it to my
full advantage. "I just need you to repeat your previous statement.
There seems to have been a jumble of some sort in our records."

"Oh, bother!" the fat woman cried. "How am I
supposed to remember everything I told you people?"

"Just the salient points, then, madam. The
men in the corridor ... I take it you saw them?"

"Of course I did. Two men, drunk as skunks it
seemed to me. Well, one of them was, anyway. The other man was
practically dragging him along. Dead to the world, he was."